How Five Points' musical roots continue to inspire Colo. musicians

Audio: Listen to Buckner Funken Jazz play "Five Points Strut"

Audio: Listen to Buckner Funken Jazz play "Get'cha Groove On"

Rob Buckner of Buckner Funken Jazz

(Photo: Courtesy of Buckner Funken Jazz)

The history of Five Points is fueled by the sounds of jazz.

“Five Points way back in the day used to be like a little Harlem,” trumpeter and vocalist Rob Buckner says. “We had Count Bessie, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles, Dizzy, Coltrane, and they all played down at the Rossonian Hotel and Casino.”

Buckner performs with Buckner Funken Jazz, an old-school, seven-member funk and jazz ensemble based in the metro area. The ensemble is one of the bands playing the Five Points Jazz Festival’s main stage Saturday.

Buckner and many of his bandmates remember the jazz heydays of the neighborhood. It was a time when they dressed to the nines, hit the best jazz clubs in Five Points and had a grand time. Some of them even had the chance to rub elbows with the great musicians that helped make Five Points such a mecca for jazz.